


Desperation

by SinfonianLegend



Series: Life Skills [1]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, F/M, I upped the rating for a couple brief descriptions of violence but I mean it's war, these two are so cute they dragged me into writing fanfic for the first time in years, years
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-06
Updated: 2019-09-06
Packaged: 2020-10-10 22:48:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20535887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SinfonianLegend/pseuds/SinfonianLegend
Summary: On the battlefield you're just as likely to die in a skirmish as you are a full-blown battle that history will remember. Not everyone gets the luxury of a close call to remember that when your commander rolls the dice for you.





	Desperation

### Desperation

He always bit off more than he could chew. It was so stupid, she thought. Her breath would catch in her chest whenever the Professor’s orders would send Felix into a nest of enemies.

The Professor did the same for Dimitri, but unlike Dimitri, Felix refused to work with a battalion. It was clear from class he could competently order them about, but bullheaded as he was, he preferred to work alone. Ingrid and Sylvain had tried time and time again to convince him it would be much safer for him to work with a battalion but every time he would brush them off. 

“I can take care of myself,” he’d grumble before finding a way to leave the conversation. Off to train even more relentlessly. 

“Maybe you should talk to him, Annette,” Sylvain would sigh to her. “He would listen to you, y’know.”

“Felix? Listen to me? No way,” she’d laugh. “He’d only listen to me if he wanted to.” But long after Sylvain had left, the issue would float to the forefront of her mind. Because by his own words, he was a captive to her voice. There was no reason he wouldn’t listen. 

Why didn’t she track him down that night and make him listen to her?

“Annette, follow Felix!” The Professor’s orders rang across the cobblestones to her and she took off as fast as her legs would carry her. She didn’t have time to be clumsy; something was wrong. The dread of it sunk through stomach and wouldn’t let go. She could have sworn she felt the world skip a beat as she ran.

As she got closer she could hear the enemies’ shouts and the sounds of metal grinding against metal. She could feel the charge in the air clinging to her skin, the scent of ozone telling her that Felix had blitzed a path straight through the enemy. She rounded the corner and froze. 

Felix was surrounded by a pile of bodies, but he had only felled half of the battalion he had dived into. Over a dozen swords, axes and magical arrays were still pointed in Felix’s direction. He danced through their ranks like water, slipping between slashes and fireballs with the ease of a torrent of water diverting around boulders, spilling over the edge of a precipice into a waterfall. And with all the force the water slams into the rocks below, he punished each misstep with a blast of thunder, a stab through the space between pieces of armor, an arrow through the neck. More bodies fell and more surged to meet him. No matter how efficiently he worked, he was still one man. 

“Felix, look out!” Fire crackled from Annette’s fingertips as the array flashed in front of her. Twin fireballs materialized and the courtyard swelled with heat. She knew it was risky, but Felix diving out of way to the ground at the sound of her voice confirmed she made the right gamble. The two fireballs enveloped half a dozen soldiers, who screamed as they roasted instantaneously within their own armor. As she drew closer to Felix she covered her approach with snaps of wind and roaring balls of flame. Only 15 feet away now. At this distance she could see the blood soaking through his armor and the shallow cuts on his arms and legs. He staggered to his feet.

“Behind you!” Felix barked. He twisted his arm. Annette whirled to barely see the assassin in time, bringing his blade up. It wasn’t enough time to summon the wind to push him away from her. He was too fast. She could see herself reflected in the assassin’s wild eyes and for just a moment her heart stopped. Her vision went white for a brief moment and a growl rolled across the tops of the buildings in the town into a roar directly above her. Then her ears rang and she couldn’t hear anything else.

Her vision cleared immediately. The assassin was charred to a crisp, crumpled in front of her now. Ozone scorched the air, just barely covering the downright wrong smell of burned human flesh. Still, in front of her Felix’s blade sang against steel like a solo before the symphony of the battlefield’s noise roared back into existence. He was down to his last sword, she noticed. The other five were strewn about the courtyard impaled in various soldiers. 

Annette stumbled to her feet. She had to help him. This was their last push. As long as they could keep the forces here engaged, the Professor, Dimitri, and all the others would be able to deal with the enemy commander no problem. They only had a few left to deal with. 

The soldier with an axe started jogging her way. The last two swordsmen kept Felix too preoccupied to help her. She summoned wave after wave of wind slicing into the soldier, dying the red accents of his armor a darker crimson as each ribbon snapped into his armor and skin. Still, he lurched toward her. His wrist snapped and the whir of a shortaxe spun through the air. Annette cursed. She tossed out blunt winds trying to slow it down to send it off course but it still ripped two burning cuts across her upper thighs. The sting of blood began to register and the steadiness was leaving her legs. She didn’t have time for this, for either of their sakes. Annette squeezed her fist and a white light descended from the skies, ripping up cobblestone and smiting the axe wielder off the face of the earth. She didn’t check for confirmation, she hurried towards Felix. 

He had severely wounded one swordsman but the other was in much better shape than Felix was. She could feel her reserves of magic beginning to bottom out but she couldn’t think about that. She had to make sure the two of them survived. Annette fired off another fireball at point blank range at the injured swordsman, finishing him off before he could open his mouth to scream. The other swordsman feinted toward Felix and without warning changed the course of his slash for Annette. With a burst of speed he shouldn’t have had left in him, Felix shot in front of her. He held his blade trying to deflect the swordsman’s but it slid right down Felix’s sword and Felix didn’t have time to react when the swordsman plunged it through Felix’s torso. He emitted a strangled cry and crumpled to the ground. 

_She didn’t have time. _She didn’t think beyond that. The next thing she knew, a knot of wind had descended upon the swordsman and torn him to ribbons. Organs and bones cut unnaturally in half, fallen into an unhuman heap. Her head was screaming at her to stop casting magic. The solidier’s blood rained onto them. She didn’t care. _ She didn’t have time. _

“We did it,” Felix mumbled weakly. He tried to hold the patch in his side that had blossomed with blood but his grip was poor and his hands shook. Annette braced his head with one hand and held the other over his torso.

“We did, now shut up.” Her hands glowed a gentle green as she quickly realized the wounds seeping all over his torso were more serious than she thought they were initially. “You need to conserve your strength.”

Felix coughed flecks of blood. “I don’t think I’m going to make it, Annette.” _Oh no._ She focused her magic into mending his battered internal organs as if her own life depended on it. She ignored the bleeding from her thighs that had not stopped since the wound opened. No matter how dizzy she felt. 

“Mercedes is too far away. Not that I don’t believe in you…but there’s a reason you’re on the front lines and she’s not.” He tried to laugh but it dissolved into increasingly distressing coughs.  
“You’re going to make it you idiot,” she said firmly. “Or…or you’ll never hear me sing again!”

His honey-colored eyes shone. Normally they were hardened shards of amber, but they had completely melted. He kept looking at her with this…wonder on his face that she couldn’t believe she was seeing. It just made the situation feel more dire. _Damn you, Felix._ “I can’t bear the thought of that.” 

“That’s right!” her voice came out more strained than she wanted it to. She needed to sound reassuring and in charge to keep him alive. “So you better keep talking to me while I fix you up!” She felt his vital energy flicker with a weak renewal of strength. 

“Oh goddess,” he sighed hoarsely into another painful-sounding cough. 

“I didn’t think you were the religious type, Felix,” she said. “I hope you don’t want your last rites right now because I don’t know how to give them. But even if I did know I-I wouldn’t give them to you! Because you’re going to live!” She wished she was Mercie in that moment. Her own capacity to heal was nothing compared to hers. But it had to be enough, it just had to be until Mercie could get to them. She had to be enough, just this once.

“No,” a little exasperation entered his voice, “I-I just can’t believe I’m going to die an idiot who didn’t tell you—who was stupid enough to think he was going to survive the war—“ His vitals flickered like a candle flame against the breeze. 

“Quit pushing yourself, Mister! Talk about something less stressful!” Annette stored what he had just said in a mental compartment she was not opening until after today. She had to keep him alive and focus on nothing else. Even if she knew she might regret that choice. 

“I can’t.” he growled. Felix hissed in pain as she worked to stop him from bleeding out. “I am not dying without telling you I love you.” 

Annette’s heart swelled with too many emotions she didn’t have the time or energy to unpack or even respond to. She simply focused on stabilizing her patient.

His vitals began to flag and he closed his eyes. “I’m such an idiot,” he whispered. 

“Felix I swear on the goddess’s name if you die right now I will never forgive you,” she snarled. “Stay with me! You can’t leave and I won’t let you!” Her eyes filled with tears and she put everything she had into fixing the scores of wounds across his body. Everything blurred out. “You…you can’t…” she whispered. The world was going dark. “I…” 

The darkness enveloped her like a warm blanket in the chill of winter. She heard someone’s voice as if she were underwater.

_“Annette…please stay with me...”_

_“I’ll never forgive you either if you give up on me right here and now.”_

\---

When Felix awoke to faint sunlight he heard the infectious bars of the Library Song being hummed nearby. He thought he would never feel the early morning warmth of the sun again, much less hear that song. But when his vision sharpened it was the Professor holding her head in her hands humming it absentmindedly.

“Felix! You’re awake!” her bottomless turquoise eyes were ringed with heavy bags he hadn’t noticed before. “Excellent. I’ll have to let Mercedes and Manuela know. How are you feeling?”

“Like I got ran through with a sword,” he coughed, thankfully hacking up nothing. “How is she?” 

“She’s just fine. It wasn’t easy to save you two in time but I managed it.” Something about the professor seemed enormously tired. “You two did well. I’m proud of you.” 

“Pride means nothing when we almost died,” he spat, but there was no real malice behind his words. They were both too exhausted for it. “Where is she?” The Professor wordlessly stood and moved from her chair next to Felix’s bed. Annette’s bed was a few feet away. She was curled toward Felix, her chest rising and falling rhythmically. Her ginger hair, normally tucked behind her ear was absolutely everywhere. Felix would have laughed if he didn’t imagine he looked just as bad if not worse with his hair out of its usual ponytail. 

“I am sorry you two were in so much danger,” the Professor said quietly. “But I promised you from the first day I had you in class that I would not let you die on any battlefield I stood upon. And I will hold that promise until I fall myself.” She walked to the doorway. “By the way, the next time you try white magic ask Mercedes for some pointers first.” 

“Huh?” for a rare moment Felix was so caught off his guard, the shock didn’t register fast enough to hide it.

“You didn’t even realize?” a small smile spread across the Professor’s face. “The only reason we were able to save Annette is because you held her together long enough for Mercedes and Flayn to get to you. Those cuts on her legs will permanently scar, but you saved her life. Turns out you didn’t completely tune out during Manuela’s seminars after all.” She left the room with Felix still looking absolutely dumbfounded. 

His gaze fell to Annette. She looked so at peace in the gentle light of the infirmary it was hard to believe the situation they had been in. _So fragile. _

He had been so desperate in that moment she collapsed on top of him. The light had gone out of her eyes and he had never been as scared as he was in that moment. 

He had risked sitting up and opening the wounds Annette had worked so hard to close. He would be fine. The clarity returned and the haze obstructing his mind had been lifted for the moment thanks to her. “Annette…” he grit his teeth to work through the pain of just shifting to a better position to support her. “Please stay with me…I can’t lose you. I won’t.” He searched his mind for anything he could use to help. It was useless.

He never understood when Annette or Lysithea would explain how using magic felt to them. They put all this energy into generating an array that tapped into the energy of the land or some garbage and they focused all this energy into changes in the array to make the kind of magic do what they want. Or they tapped into a person’s vital energies and…did something with it. Felix didn’t get it.

To him, magic was a natural extension of the self. He commanded fire and lightning with the ease of striking his blade; they were an extension of himself. He pulled in this corner of his mind and everything clicked into place and it did exactly what he wanted it to do. He hadn’t bothered with white magic because he had one job and it wasn’t healing others. But with Annette getting paler by the second and her blood seeping into the cobblestones he was at a loss for what to do. He propped her head up and eased the last of the vulnerary he had down her throat. Then he tore pieces of his cloak and tied them around the surprisingly deep cuts on her thighs but still she grew paler. Each breath grew shallower.

He couldn’t believe the love of his life was bleeding out in his arms. _And who knows if she felt the same way. _

He propped her up against his chest and they leaned against a nearby building. _ Do something. You weren’t there for Glen and you couldn’t save your father but you can save her, damnit._

He hugged her close to his body and closed his eyes, so focused the entire world fell away, with not a thought in his mind but to save her. Something gathered at his fingertips and he breathed as deeply as someone could with broken ribs and a pierced lung and who knows what else. Instinct guided his hands.

“I’ll never forgive you either if you give up on me right here and now,” Felix whispered. “So don’t you dare give up.”

Something in his chest flickered and he lost consciousness. _“She smells like lavender,”_ had been his last thought. He never thought he would see her again. But here they both were, miraculously alive. He still couldn’t believe he had mustered together enough white magic to keep her tethered to this world. But there was no other explanation. He wasn’t about to start believing in the goddess. But he believed the Professor’s word.

Felix collapsed immediately then from relief. They were safe. They had made it. Everything was okay. But he was dimly aware that something was different now. In the heat of the moment he had told her the truth. He hadn’t been quite ready to tell her yet, and he was planning to give her his family ring after the war. He had vowed he was only going to tell her if he made it to the end of the war. 

But on the knife edge of death he couldn’t accept dying with a regret that large. He could accept that he would never surpass Glenn, that his father would be disappointed in him, and that he had failed the boar prince, the Professor, and his country. 

But not her. It was unbelievably selfish of him—what if he had died on her after saying that? That would almost be a bigger regret than dying and not telling her.

But he was too exhausted for something like anxiety to keep him awake. 

His dreams were filled with a girl who danced light as a lilting leaf on the breeze and sang of swamp beasties. 

\--

Annette slowly came to hearing someone humming. Then she realized it was one of her songs. Then she realized the person humming one of her songs was _Felix._

She shot up and immediately regretted it. There was an ache between her shoulder blades of a wound not yet healed. She was in the infirmary. To her left was Felix avoiding eye contact but clearly not ignoring that she was awake.

“How are you feeling?” he asked. 

“I’m sorry were you humming the Library Song?” she asked hoarsely. 

Felix knew it was coming and still couldn’t bring himself to answer with a biting retort like he normally would. “…it’s catchy, okay? But really, how are you feeling? You’ve been asleep longer than I was by a whole day.”

Annette took a moment to wiggle her limbs and test for pain around her body. The minor burns, cuts, and bruises were sore but nothing felt majorly wrong. “…Good. Really good actually.” She yawned. “I don’t remember the last time I slept that well. Wow!” Her memories started to come back to her and the joy on her face instantly shifted to worry. “What about you?”

“I’ve been better.” He shrugged. He glanced out of the corner of his eye at her, still refusing to look at her directly. _Why?_ His shoulders were tight and he was drawn into himself more than usual. She remembered the battle and barely being able to cover him in time…she remembered trying to patch his injuries…and passing out. Was she forgetting something? “I-I need to go,” he mumbled. He swung his legs off the bed and his legs buckled when he tried to stand.

“Felix!” she said with alarm. His face scrunched up in pain. Mumbling something under his breath, he slid back onto the bed. 

“Guess I’m not going anywhere,” he laughed, a short, flat snort. 

“Why were you trying to leave anyway?” Annette asked. “You should’ve realized it wasn’t a good idea.” 

He didn’t say anything at first. Felix just stared out the window and seemed to completely ignore her. “I thought…it would be…awkward. For you. To have to be stuck next to me like this. After what I said,” he answered eventually with some reluctance. And suddenly her memory was jogged.

_Oh. Right. That. _

“I-I-I um,” she stammered, “Listen I was so focused on making sure you didn’t die I couldn’t focus on what you said but I really haven’t had time to process it and I’m sorry because I don’t want to leave you hanging especially when I think I might want to spend the rest of my life with you but I don’t know and oh my goddess—“ 

“Annette.” He finally looked her in the eyes. He was blushing so hard it was too cute for Annette to think about. “It’s okay. Take your time. Let me know when you’re ready. I’ll be here. It wasn’t fair of me to say that in the first place in that situation.”

“You almost died you idiot, if I almost died I would’ve definitely said something to you—“ Annette nervously twirled her hair around her fingers, internally groaning that she must look like a complete wreck. Felix was so important to her it felt like the world started to fall apart when he was bleeding out in her arms. _Is that what love felt like?_ She had no idea.

It seemed like he kept trying to hold back a laugh until it burst out of him. “You did almost die. You didn’t realize?” Recognition dawned in his eyes with some other emotion she couldn’t place. She felt her face somehow flush even more. 

“I was too busy trying to keep you alive! I didn’t think it was that bad!” she burst. “How…how am I even still here right now? I passed out…so that axe must’ve gotten my femoral artery or something…” There was no way. Maybe she really was dead. The light filtering through the window suddenly seemed too bright. Oh goddess she and Felix were dead and she was stuck in purgatory with Felix. Was this even the real Felix or did her brain make him up because she was dead? _Isn’t Sothis supposed to come guide us to--_

“Mercedes got close enough to heal you from a distance.” 

_Huh?_

“But you were in way worse shape than I was…I don’t…” Annette trailed off. It didn’t make sense. Felix’s gaze was affixed to his hands resting in his lap. He spoke slow, measured syllables.

“You had stabilized me. So Mercedes prioritized you because you were bleeding out. It’s only natural.” Something still didn’t sit right with her but she had no words. They were both very much alive. She pinched herself for good measure. “So rest easy. We march for Enbarr in a couple weeks. We’ve got to be in top form for then.” 

Right,” she mumbled. “Um, I need to thank you though. For taking that sword for me. I think you saved my life.” His gaze returned to her and he shook his head.

“If you hadn’t come I definitely would have perished. So it was the least I could do.” he said quietly. “I’m just sorry I couldn’t stop that shortaxe in the first place.”

“It’s okay. We both made it out alive alright? That’s what matters.” Annette sighed and leaned back into the mountain of pillows behind her, closing her eyes.

“Mm.” 

She had the time to heal and figure things out. Talk to Mercie, Ashe, Dedue, Dimitri…her father. Make him listen to her. 

_“Take your time. I’ll be here.”_

_But would he really be, though?_ Today was just another reminder that this was war. Even though they were so close to the end to when they were all going home—which was another scary thought for her, having been in the war for five and half years now—they could easily fall in a normal skirmish in some random village. They had both just proven that. 

So why was she so scared to act now? Annette took a deep breath.

“Felix, I… You mean so much to me. I don’t know everything I’m feeling right now, but…I feel like I don’t have time to sort them out because either of us could just die so quickly. But…I know that I want to stay with you after the war more than anything.” No response. The silence in the room made it hard to breathe. She opened her eyes and tentatively turned to look at him. 

Felix was out cold, breathing evenly. He had definitely fallen asleep before she said any of that at all. His face looked so peaceful it almost seemed like he was smiling ever so faintly. His hair poofed and fanned out all around him to such an extent, it almost looked like a bird shed all of its feathers on his head. She chuckled to herself at the thought. Turns out she really did have time to rest, think, and heal. And she would be ready for that conversation when it came. 

But first, Annette needed to talk to her father. Not that he had any real input over how she was going to live her life, but…as soon as she could get out of bed she wasn’t going to passively let life throw whatever her way when the war ended. She knew she had to make it through the war, no matter how scary the future looked beyond that, outside of a routine. Which meant more training to make sure she’d get there, and to make sure a certain dense swordsman would be standing next to her in one piece at the end of the war. It also meant she couldn’t put off things she would rather shove down or ignore. But she was going to take life in her own hands, and that was worth something. Progress.

So when the Kingdom’s flag flew from the highest towers of Enbarr, when dawn came, she would be ready.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry if this was a bit rough! I don't normally write shippy stuff, and I wanted to get better at writing fight scenes, so I was freaking out over three houses and here we are XD I might write one or two more of these (with a theme of the different skills like Vantage, Wrath, etc.) because I didn't anticipate the direction the ending went! I'd really like constructive feedback, so if you see anything that jumps out at you please leave a comment!  
Thanks for reading~  
-Legend


End file.
